Archives

Follow me on Twitter

• Germany to sanction Iranian airliner over spying claims For months now, European countries have called for concrete action against entities linked to Iranian intelligence. Mahan Air reportedly maintains close ties to an elite group of Iran's security services. The German government has prepared sanctions against Iranian airline Mahan Air in connection […]

The confrontation between different ruling factions in Iran over the futile Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) after three years, shows the dead-end the Iranian regime finds itself stuck in as the sanctions regime and international isolation of the regime intensifies. The grandiosely hyped deal between Iran and the P5+1 countries, which was supposed […]

Pursuant to a message by the US Secretary of State calling on Iranians to share their questions and desires on the social media, the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and the Revolutionary Guards mobilized their forces inside and outside Iran to spread misinformation against the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran(PMOI/MeK) and the Iranian Resist […]

Freedom Star: A brief report with a video on the human rights situation in Iran in 2018 has been published by the Iran Human Rights Monitor in YouTube, which provides useful and brief information on the horrific human rights violations in the Mullahs dictatorial regime.

The year of 2018, Human Rights Day marked the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being.

The people in Iran, however, are deprived of their most basic rights due to the horrendous violations of human rights committed by the clerical regime ruling the country. This oppression culminates in horrific scenes of public hangings, floggings, and even limb amputations.

Prisons are overwhelmed with inmates, and conditions are intolerable and inhumane. Political prisoners, specifically, are subjected to horrendous mistreatment by the authorities.

Iran’s judicial and security organs systematically wage a vicious crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, women’s and civil rights activists, teachers and labor activists, students, journalists and online media activists in blatant disregard of international and domestic standards. Hundreds of activists are imprisoned for peacefully exercising their rights. Here is a glance on the regime’s record in 2018.

It must be stressed that the figures cited in this report have been compiled from official sources or from reliable non-governmental sources inside Iran who risked their lives to obtain the data. Therefore, they should be considered as minimums due to lack of transparency and censorship on the part of the Iranian regime and the absence of free access to information under the clerical regime.

The Iranian regime has a dismal report card of at least 285 executions as of December 2017, including the execution of four women and six individuals who were sentenced to death for crimes they allegedly committed as children.

An estimated 8,000 arbitrary arrests were made in the course of the month-long protests in January. At least 58 were killed during the 2018 protests and 12 jailed protesters murdered under torture. Iran must understand its atrocious crimes will not go unpunished.

While more strong measures against Tehran are necessary, emphasis should be placed on Tehran’s human rights violations. The sanctions adopted by the US targeting institutions which have quashed dissent and are heavily involved in human rights violations, are welcome.

Iran Human Rights Monitor urges the international community to hold the mullahs accountable for their crimes against humanity, and stand by the Iranian people in their struggle to achieve their basic human rights.

A glance at the abysmal human rights situation in Iran – December 2018

Freedom Star: Iran Human Rights Monitor‘s annual report for 2018 was released. In this comprehensive and documentary report on the human rights situation in Iran under the rule of the criminal mullahs, along with specific statistics and examples. I invite you to read some parts of this report to get acquainted with the terrible human rights violations in Iran under the bloody religious dictatorship.

Introduction

This year, Human Rights Day marks the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a milestone document that proclaimed the inalienable rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being.
The people in Iran, however, are deprived of their most basic rights due to the horrendous violations of human rights committed by the clerical regime ruling the country.
This oppression culminates in horrific scenes of public hangings, floggings, and even limb amputations.
Prisons are overwhelmed with inmates, and conditions are intolerable and inhumane. Political prisoners, specifically, are subjected to horrendous mistreatment by the authorities.
Iran’s judicial and security organs systematically wage a vicious crackdown on human rights defenders, lawyers, women’s and civil rights activists, teachers and labor activists, students, journalists and online media activists in blatant disregard of international and domestic standards.
Hundreds of activists are imprisoned for peacefully exercising their rights.
Here is a glance on the regime’s record in 2018. It must be stressed that the figures cited in this report have been compiled from official sources or from reliable non-governmental sources inside Iran who risked their lives to obtain the data. Therefore, they should be considered as minimums due to lack of transparency and censorship on the part of the Iranian regime and the absence of free access to information under the clerical regime.
The Iranian regime has a dismal report card of at least 285 executions as of December 2017, including the execution of four women and six individuals who were sentenced to death for crimes they allegedly committed as children.
An estimated 8,000 arbitrary arrests were made in the course of the month-long protests in January.
At least 58 were killed during the 2018 protests and 12 jailed protesters murdered under torture.
Iran must understand its atrocious crimes will not go unpunished. While more strong measures against Tehran are necessary, emphasis should be placed on Tehran’s human rights violations.
The sanctions adopted by the US targeting institutions which have quashed dissent and are heavily involved in human rights violations, are welcome.
Iran Human Rights Monitor urges the international community to hold the mullahs accountable for their crimes against humanity, and stand by the Iranian people in their struggle to achieve their basic human rights.

Freedom of expression, association and assembly

The Iranian authorities crushed the right to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, by cracking down on peaceful protesters. The swift and violent suppression of the protests and the number of deaths in custody suggest that freedom of assembly and expression has deteriorated.
The protests that erupted in nearly every Iranian province since late December 2017 were met with a state response that was notable for its harshness and disregard for the law.
According to reports from inside Iran and from within the regime, the number of detainees of the protests amounted to at least 8,000 by the end of the second week of the protests. Detainees were denied access to legal representation and threatened with more serious charges if they sought counsel.
Despite the regime’s attempts to conceal the number of arrests, it admitted to parts of it.
Meanwhile, officials openly spoke of “preemptive” arrests to curb further disturbances.
There are also reliable reports that detainees were administered pills of an unknown substance, as well as methadone, without the presence of a doctor, in what appears to be a concerted attempt to depict the detainees as drug addicts.
Twelve inmates died in custody under suspicious circumstances.
Vahid Heydari, 22, is an example of those who died in detention at the 12th Police Station in the city of Arak, Central Province, sometime between the closing days of December 2017 and the beginning of January 2018. The authorities claimed he was a drug addict who committed suicide—a claim that his family has vehemently denied and for which there is little credible evidence.
Another detainee who officials claimed committed suicide,Sina Ghanbari, 23, was arrested on December 31, 2017, during protests in Tehran and taken to Evin Prison. A week later, judicial officials claimed he had hanged himself in the bathroom of the prison’s quarantine unit on January 6, 2018. His body was delivered to his family on January 9.

Numerous videos circulated widely on social media channels showed authorities using potentially lethal force against protesters. At least 50 protesters were directly shot dead by the state security force during the street protests.
In August, more than 1,000 people were arrested during protests in Tehran and other provinces over deteriorating economic conditions and corruption. A protester was murdered in Karaj, during the week-long protests.
There is grave concern that several hundreds of thousands of those arrested in 2018 protests may still be in custody.
The Iranian Judiciary has convicted the protesters on vaguely defined national security charges and handed down heavy sentences.
More recently, in the 15 HEPCO workers, to intimidate protesting and striking workers, the Judiciary of Arak condemned 15 HEPCO workers to 74 lashes, one to two years in prison and five-year suspended sentences for their protest in June last year against non-payment of their salaries and benefits, and the government’s failure to delivers on its promises. They were charged with “disrupting public order” and “spreading propaganda against the regime.”
As for the truckers who held a nationwide strike over high prices and non-paid wages, a judiciary official warned them of “harsh penalties” if they continued their protests, state media said in September.
Mohseni Ejei warned truck drivers who have continued their protests despite several rounds of arrests. “Harsh penalties await those who … block lorry traffic on roads,” he was cited by the state-run IRNA news agency as saying.
General prosecutor Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said that protesting drivers may face death sentencesunder stern laws against highway robbery, the state broadcaster IRIB reported.
At least 264 of striking drivers were arrested for allegedly blocking roads and trying to pressure colleagues to join the strike, according to Iranian news agencies.
In yet another case, the head of the Revolutionary Court warned that those arrested in the January 2018 protests could face the death penalty.

Torture and other ill-treatment

Torture and other ill-treatment are still common practice, especially during interrogations.
What needs clarification is the fact that Iran prisons are infamous for widespread use of tortures and inhumane and unbearable conditions.
At least seven individuals were tortured to death while many others were subjected to ill-treatment such as prolonged solitary confinement in cells with no windows, ventilation and lavatories.
Commonly reported methods of torture in prisons also include tying the inmates to a pole in cold or hot weather, mock execution, kicking and punching; beatings with cables or whips.
The reports pointed to common use of physical or mental pressure on prisoners including isolation to coerce them into making false confessions.
Reports obtained from inside Iran prisons indicate use of methods such as burning, electric shocks, pharmacological torture, and sleep deprivation.
Prisoners endure cruel and inhuman conditions including overcrowding, limited hot water, inadequate food, scarce beds, poor ventilation and insect infestations.
Political prisoners were locked up with dangerous criminals, murderers and ex-members of armed gangs.
As an example, Iran’s judiciary used the Great Tehran Penitentiary, originally designed to detain drug offenders, to incarcerate dissidents and anti-state protesters convicted of politically motivated charges.
Soheil Arabi was transferred from Evin Prison to the GTP on January 29, 2018. He was kept with dangerous and belligerent criminals who have assaulted him several times and threatened his life. His family members said prison guards have turned a blind eye on the systematic harassment and ignored complaints made by the prisoner.
2018 reports indicate inmates are also subjected to rape.Taymour Khaledian, a civil activist, revealed on May 19, 2018, that he had been “severely beaten and sexually tortured” at a State Security Force base during his detention last winter, after he was arrested in protest gatherings. He explained that he was punched, kicked and beaten by shockers and batons. He was so tortured that he did not have the power to sit for some time.
Political prisoners were denied medical care, held in solitary confinement and faced fresh criminal charges in reprisal.
The judiciary, in particular the Office of the Prosecutor, and prison administrations continued to deliberately prevent political prisoners’ access to adequate medical care in many cases to extract “confessions”.
Iranian authorities deliberately deprived Arash Sadeghi from his cancer treatment. Arash Sadeghi was diagnosed with a cancerous bone tumour in August. However, authorities at Raja’i Shahr prison repeatedly impeded his access to potentially life-saving medical care.
The Iranian authorities’ treatment of Arash Sadeghi is not only unspeakably cruel, in legal terms it is an act of torture, Amnesty International said in a September statement.
Arash Sadeghi was sentenced to 19 years in prison in 2016, for his peaceful human rights work.

Cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment

A number of cruel punishmentswere handed down in 2018, including hand amputations and floggings.

Statistics:

At least 110 people received flogging sentences
• At least one instance of hand amputation was reported
• At least 11 people were flogged
Iranian authorities publicly flogged a man in July for drinking alcohol. Identified only as M.R., he was 14 or 15 years old when he consumed alcohol at a wedding party. He received 80 lashes on the back in Niazmand Square in the city of Kashmar, northwest Iran.
Authorities in Iran amputated the hand of a convicted thief in a prison in the country’s northeast, according to the state-run ISNA news agency. The January report said one hand of the 34-year-old convict identified only as Ali was cut off by “guillotine” in a prison in Mashhad. The report said Ali was detained in 2011 for allegedly stealing sheep, jewelry and motorbikes.

Unfair trials

Iranian courts, and particularly the revolutionary courts failed to hold fair trials. They allegedly used confessions obtained under torture as evidence in courts including in cases which ended up with death penalties. Iranian law restricts a defendant’s right to access a lawyer, particularly during the investigation period.
Iran’s judiciary in June approved a list of 20 lawyers to represent people accused of national security crimes, i.e. human rights activists, in Tehran’s courts during the investigative stage. Despite the fact that Tehran has more than 20,000 lawyers registered with its bar association, Iran’s Tasnim News Agency published the names of 20 defenders cleared to represent individuals charged with political, security or media crimes. However, even prior to the approved list, human rights organizations had noted a pattern of detainees being denied access to legal representation.
This is just one more example of Iran’s judiciary trampling over due process.
Iranian courts are controlled by hardliners who are accountable to the regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. They often act swiftly and harshly against dissidents and civil activists on vague charges and behind closed doors.
Serious concerns remain that judges, particularly those presiding over Revolutionary Courts, are appointed on the basis of their political opinions and affiliations with intelligence bodies, and lack legal qualifications.

Death penalty

Iran is the world’s leading executioner per capita, with many hangings carried out in public. At least 285 people were executed in the period spanning December 2017 to December 2018. The real numbers were likely to be much higher as use of capital punishment in Iran is often shrouded in secrecy.

Statistics:

At least 285 people were executed
• At least 11 people were executed in public
• At least 10 political prisoners were executed
• At least 4 women were executed
• At least 6 individuals were executed for crimes they allegedly committed as minors.
Several scheduled executions were postponed in the last minute to add to the mental and physical ordeal of imprisonment on death row. Thousands remain on death row.
One of the infamous cases in 2018 was the executions of three Kurdish political prisonershanged on September 8.
Cousins Zaniar Moradi and Loghman Moradi were held for nine months at Raja’i Shahr Prison of Karaj without access to their lawyers and families before being executed.

They said they had confessed to murder under torture. They were punched, kicked, and tied to a bed and flogged. They had been also threatened with rape. Their request for a judicial review of their case was repeatedly ignored.
The third Kurdish activist, Ramin Hossein Panahi, was accused of “taking up arms against the state” in June 2017.
The executions took place despite a call to halt the executions by two U.N. human rights special rapporteurs, Javaid Rehman and Agnes Callamard, who said in a statement that the men had not been given fair trials.
Another example was the execution of a 51-year-old man from Iran’s largest Sufi order, the Gonabadi Dervish religious minority, which was carried out despite serious unfair trial concerns.Mohamed Salas was executed by the Iranian authorities at dawn on June 18, 2018. Amnesty International condemned in the strongest terms the execution asserting: “Mohammad Salas’ trial was grossly unfair. He said he was forced under torture to make a ‘confession’ against himself. This ‘confession’, taken from his hospital bed, was broadcast on state television weeks before his trial and used as the only piece of evidence to convict him. He was not allowed access to his chosen lawyer at any point before or during his trial, and his independent lawyer’s repeated demands to the authorities to allow critical evidence indicating his innocence were dismissed outright.”
In fact, the Iranian regime uses the death penalty as a tool to suppress and silence a disgruntled public the majority of whom live under the poverty line, are unemployed and deprived of freedom of expression.

Freedom of religion and belief

The Iranian regime is among the top violators of the rights of religious minorities. Widespread and systematic attacks continued to be carried out against religious minorities.
Among religious groups, Baha’is and Christian converts from Islam were seriously discriminated against. They faced systematic discrimination, including in education and employment, and were persecuted for practicing their faith.

Baha’isFollowers of the Baha’i faith are systematically harassed and persecuted under the clerical regime in Iran. They are denied equitable access to employment, education, political office and exercise of their economic, social and cultural rights.
Systematic violence against members of Baha’i community further included arbitrary arrests, lengthy imprisonment, torture and other ill-treatment, forcible closure of Baha’i-owned businesses, and confiscation of Baha’i properties.
In the time period under study, at least 72 Baha’i people have been arrested while 69 were deprived of education. 18 Baha’I owned businesses have been shut down.

ChristiansThe Iranian regime continues to harass, interrogate and arrest Christians. Many have been charged with spurious, security-related charges such as “acting against national security” and sometimes handed prison sentences of 10 years or longer.
Most recently, Saheb Fadaei and Fatimeh Bakherti, both converts from Islam, were sentenced to more than a year in prison for “spreading propaganda against the regime,” a common charge used against Christians along with “acting against national security.” Fadaei was already serving a 10-year sentence.
In yet another case, two Christian converts were detained on November 16, in what some human rights activists are calling a rash of arrests in the area.
Behnam Ersali and Davoud Rasouli, both converts from Islam who live in Karaj, had arranged to meet in Mashhad, according to advocacy organization Middle East Concern (MEC), but their calls are believed to have been intercepted by the Iranian intelligence.
Rob Duncan, regional manager at MEC, said: “It reveals how closely the Iranian authorities are monitoring the Christians.”

Sufis
Followers of Ahl-e Haq or Yaresan were also arrested in large numbers, brutalized and imprisoned.
Iranian authorities arrested 600 Dervishes during street protests by Iranian Dervishes in Tehran.
Amnesty International said some families were not informed of their whereabouts and the detainees were denied access to lawyers until their interrogations were complete.
Dozens of the arrested Dervishes have received heavy sentences so far.
Dervishes involved in the February protests had been demanding the release of arrested members of their community and the removal of security checkpoints around the house of their 90-year-old leader.
Members of the Sufi Muslim religious sect long have complained of harassment by Iran’s Shiite Islamist rulers, who view them as heretics.

Prisons

Thousands of prisoners are being held under the worst conditions possible. They face numerous issues of concern. Prisoners’ objections are met by prison guards attacking and beating them.
Following is a brief review of the conditions in a few of these prisons:

Evin PrisonEvin Prison is a vast complex that consists of multiple buildings, generally up to three floors high with two sections on each floor. Several reports point to inhumane and unsanitary conditions at Evin Prison. Chronic overcrowding, severely limited hot water, poor ventilation, and infestations of cockroaches and mice, particularly near kitchen areas, are among the most common complaints. Prisoners are forced to sleep on the floor during cold winter months due to a shortage of beds. According to the reports from inside the prison, meals are little and “barely edible.” Hungry inmates have to collect food residues from other trays or the ground.

Raja’i Shahr PrisonDue to the presence of dangerous criminals, bloody clashes among prisoners is a common incident in this prison. Ordinary criminals are detained in the cell neighboring political prisoners.
Usually, there is no water and prisoners can use the bathroom only for limited hours. Warm water is available only one hour a day and the rest of the day, prisoners have to take shower with cold water.
Prisoners are beaten and denied medical care. Inmates and their families face degrading treatment during visits through invasive and abusive body searches. In Section 4, Room 12, where political prisoners are held, air ventilation is poor as the windows are covered with metal sheets.

The Great Tehran PenitentiaryLocated in Tehran Province’s Fashafouyeh district, 20 miles southeast of Tehran, the Great Tehran Penitentiary was built in 2015 primarily for holding inmates convicted of drug-related offenses. Iran’s judiciary has also used the GTP to incarcerate dissidents and anti-state protesters.
Multiple former detainees have pointed out the inhumane living conditions in the GTP, the largest detention facility in the country. A journalist recently described it as “beyond the limits of human tolerance.” There is running water for only one hour a day. There is only one toilet for every 170 prisoners. Sanitation and health conditions are so bad that several prisoners have got serious infections.
Ticks and lice infestation are common in overcrowded cells. Prisoners have to take a shower with a single pitcher of water. There are prisoners with HIV and hepatitis who are not being treated or segregated from other prisoners. The authorities have not taken any action to deal with this problem.

Diezelabad Prison of KermanshahThe cells made for three, are filled with seven prisoners. The cells are inspected every other day, the inmates’ belongings confiscated and their books torn. Prisoners get fresh air for only half an hour. The cells lack any form of ventilation, heaters or cooling system. The prison’s store sells only wafers, tea and artificial fruit juice and prisoners do not have access to any other item. To extract confession, interrogators commonly threaten prisoners with rape.

Karaj Central PrisonKaraj Central Prison was built for 2,000 inmates. Currently, 8,300 inmates are in extremely inadequate conditions at this facility. A 20 square meter room is home to 45 inmates using three-level bunkbeds. There is no medical care for the inmates. Food quality is very low.
In response to their complaints, the ward chief says they are given 37,000 rials (around 25 cents) for each inmate and they do not have enough money to provide food.

Persecution of ethnic minorities

Ethnic minorities including Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, Lors and Arabs have been subjected to oppression for years at the hands of the Iranian authorities.

Arabs
Hundreds of people were arrested around Ahvaz last year amid protests against the regime’s discriminatory policies, water and power cuts and poverty.
Fifteen year-old Ma’edeh Shabaninejad was one of those arrested in March at her aunt’s house in Ahvaz, where she was hiding after security forces raided her own home and confiscated her poems.
In a sweeping crackdown against the Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority in recent months, authorities arrested at least 700 of people in Khuzestan province. The wave of detentions follows a deadly armed attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz in September. Amnesty International believed that “authorities are using the attack in Ahvaz as an excuse to lash out against members of the Ahwazi Arab ethnic minority, including civil society and political activists, in order to crush dissent in Khuzestan province.”
Iranian authorities did not disclose the fate and whereabouts of hundreds of the detainees being held without access to their families or lawyers.
At the same time, Ahwazi Arab activists outside Iran told Amnesty International that 22 men, including civil society activist Mohammad Momeni Timas, have been killed in secret.

Turks
Azerbaijani Turkic minority rights activists were also targeted.
Iranian authorities arbitrarily detained 120 people in connection with two separate Azerbaijani Turkic cultural gatherings that took place in July and August 2018.
They were targeted solely for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly, including through their advocacy promoting the rights of the Azerbaijani Turkic minority in Iran.
There were disturbing reports of torture and other ill-treatment committed by security forces during and after the arrests, particularly those which took place in July.

Baluchis
Iran’s Baluch minority numbers between one and four million people, based mainly in the southeastern region of Sistan and Baluchestan.
Discrimination and poverty in Baluchestan region have led to many security implications. Even the state’s own research institutes have maintained that discrimination against the Baluchis has created poverty in the region.
Recently, IRGC-linked news agency Tasnim published a research that poverty in the province has led to a marked increase in the number of those who leave schools, concluding that the rise in drop-outs has had various social, economic, cultural and security implications.
In the meantime, several Baluchis have been killed while smuggling gas-oil to make ends meet in this unemployment-stricken area. Security forces are not answerable for the murders.
Baluch human rights activists believe that more than 100 people, including innocent bystanders, are killed every year in anti-smuggling operations in Iran’s Baluch populated province.

Kurds
Regime forces, mainly the IRGC, continued to unlawfully attack and even open fire on scores of unarmed Kurdish men known as Kulbars who carry huge packs of goods on their backs and cross the border on foot to supply them with goods not widely available in Iran, like alcohol, foreign clothing, and other consumer goods.
At least 81 Kurdish porters were shot dead by the state security forces in 2018 in the mountainous border region.
Iranian security forces began in December 2017 to block footpaths kulbars use to carry goods into Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan. Much of the local economy in Iran’s predominantly Kurdish region relies on such trade.
The border blockade deprived residents of imported products to sell in local stores, which have suffered from a lack of customers because of widespread poverty in the region.
There was a heavy police presence across Kurdistan province to confront protests in the majority Kurdish regions with merchants going on strike to highlight the financial losses they’ve suffered since Iran closed the border. The state security forces arrested at least 30 Kurdish people during the protests.
In March, the state security forces also arrested 20 Kurdish activists in the run-up to Nowruz celebrations, which mark the start of the Persian new year. The arrests took place in the village of Nay, in Marivan County, Kurdistan Province.
Around the same time, 11 Kurdish rights activists, including outspoken journalist, Adnan Hassanpour, were arrested in Marivan. All the detainees were reportedly accused of participation in a rally for supporting the city of Afrin and its residents in Syria, where was surrounded by Turkish military units at that time.

Discrimination against women and girls

Iranian woman physically attacked by ‘morality police’

Women are discriminated against in law and practice, including in access to divorce, employment, equal inheritance and political office, and in family and criminal law.
The Global Gender Gap 2017 report ranks Iran 140th among 144 countries.
Women’s participation in City Councils amounts to 1.7 per cent. “Women almost disappear in senior management positions.”
Women were the first victims of Iran’s bankrupt economy in light of the flagrant discrimination against women institutionalized in the law and numerous restrictions imposed on their employment and education.
Hassan Ta’ii, job market advisor to the Minister of Labor, said in September 2017, that working women receive %77 of men’s wage for equal work, and as such they lag 10 years behind their male colleagues.
Many colleges educated women resort to jobs with salaries as low as one-third of the minimum wage.
Leila Falahati, from the presidential Directorate on Women and Family Affairs, set women’s economic participation rate at an optimistic 17 per cent in Iran. This leaves Iran way behind other economic powers in the Middle East region. (The state-run ISNA news agency, January 13,2018)
This is while the latest estimates according to official figures stood at 11.8 per cent.
The unemployment rate among young women doubles that of men. Only 16.2 per cent of the 21 million-strong workforce are women.
Women’s employment in Iran is contingent on gender segregation at the work place. If women’s place of work is not separate from men, companies and workshops are not allowed to employ women.
Also, many of the public places including classes, university entrances, parks, city buses, trains and etc. have already been segregated.
Authorities have defied ongoing public pressure to open football stadiums to women spectators.
Acts of violence against women and girls, including domestic violence and early and forced marriages are widespread.
The phenomenon of child brides in Iran has taken on catastrophic dimensions.
At least 180,000 early marriages are registered in Iran every year.
At least 37,000 of them are given to marriage between 10 to 15.
One of the main reasons is the law that sets the legal age of marriage for girls at 13 and allows fathers to wed them even earlier. At the same time, the mullahs’ parliament has been refraining so far to pass a bill seeking to raise the minimum age of marriage for girls.
Shahrbanou Imami, member of Tehran’s City Council and former member of the mullahs’ parliament, told an IWD gathering at Tehran’s Melli University that there were 15,000 young widows under 15 years of age in Iran. (The state-run ILNA news agency, March 8,2018)

Introduction

While 160 countries across the world have either abolished the Death Penalty or at least called a moratorium on its use, the clerical regime ruling Iran remains among the world’s most brutal.

The Iranian regime executes more people per capita than any other country. The total number of executions carried out in Iran stands only next to China, whose population is over 17 folds greater. According to Amnesty International, Iran accounts for over half of executions world over.

Tehran sanctions capital punishment for political dissidents as well as ethnic and religious minorities. Juvenile offenders and women are not excluded.

Iran Human Rights Monitor recorded at least 3,602 death sentences carried out during Rouhani’s tenure. This includes the executions of 34 juvenile offenders, 84 women and 86 political prisoners.

Since January 2018, at least 223 people have been executed. The executions of at least nine political prisoners and six individuals who were under 18 at the time of the crime have been confirmed. 35 executions were carried out in public. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher as most executions are carried out secretly.

The death penalty is not only a means for punishment in Iran, but a tool for perserving the rule of those in power in the face of an increasingly furious populace.

The most recent case was the Judiciary spokesman threatening to execute truckers participating in a nationwide strike to demand their rights.

In yet another case, the head of the Revolutionary Court warned that those arrested in the January 2018 protests could face the death penalty.

On the occasion of the World Day Against the Death Penalty, Iran Human Rights Monitor draws attention in this report to the common use of the death penalty in Iran often carried out before completion of the due process of law against young Iranians.

Iran HRM calls on all international human rights advocates, in particular the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, and the Working Group on Arbitrary Executions, to use their powers and authority to compel the clerical regime to stop its prevalent use of the death penalty.

Executing Child Offenders

Iran is one of only four countries known to have executed child offenders since 2013.

In contrast to the international law, retrials of juvenile offenders pursuant to Article 91 of the 2013 Islamic Penal Code result in renewed death sentences following arbitrary assessments of their “maturity” at the time of the crime.

Article 6.5 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that death sentence “shall not be imposed for crimes committed by persons below eighteen years of age.”

Iranian authorities detain death-row child offenders until they pass their 18th birthday and then they execute them.

Iran has executed at least five child offenders across the country since January 2018:

Amirhossein Pourjafar

On January 4, authorities in Karaj prison executed Amirhossein Pourjafar for the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl when he was 16. Pourjafar, who was 18 when he was executed, told Shargh newspaper on December 30, 2017, that he was under influence of alcohol when he committed the crime. Mojtaba Farahbakhsh, Pourjafar’s lawyer, told the newspaper that Pourjafar had signs of a “conduct disorder” and had been hospitalized in a mental health center during his detention. Despite these circumstances, the authorities pushed ahead with carrying out the death penalty.

Ali Kazemi

On January 30, authorities in Bushehr prison, in southern Iran, executed Ali Kazemi for a murder he allegedly committed when he was 15. He was executed even though the authorities had promised to try to halt the execution. On the morning of January 30, prison authorities called to reassure the family that the execution had not taken place. However, at midday, Kazemi’s family found out that the execution had just been carried out.

Mahboubeh Mofidi

On January 30, in Nowshahr prison in northern Iran, authorities executed Mahboubeh Mofidi, who was married when she was 13, for the alleged murder of her husband in 2014, when she was 17. Mofidi was 20 when authorities executed her on January 30 in Nowshahr prison in Mazandaran province.

Abolfazl Chezani Sharahi

On June 27, Abolfazl Chezani Sharahi, aged 19, was executed in Qom prison in Qom province, central Iran. He was sentenced to death for a murder committed when he was aged 14 based on an official medical opinion that he was “mature” at the time of the crime.

Zeinab Sekaanvand

On October 2, 24-year-old Kurdish woman Zeinab Sekaanvand was executed in Urumieh central prison, in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, despite being only 17 at time of alleged crime. Sekaanvand was married at 15, suffered domestic abuse and reportedly endured torture during her police interrogation.

What’s especially chilling about Zeinab Sekaanvand’s case is the number of points at which the #Iranian authorities could have intervened to help her. She reported the abuse she suffered.

The trials of all three men were grossly unfair. All were denied access to their lawyers and families after their arrest, and all said they were tortured into making “confessions”. They had been sentenced to death despite these massive failings in due process.

The two cousins had spent eight years on death row since confessing to a 2009 killing of the son of a Muslim cleric in Marivan, a confession that both men later said was extracted under torture.

Panahi was sentenced to death in January for allegedly drawing a weapon against Iranian security forces operating in northwestern Iran’s predominantly ethnic Kurdish region in June 2017. He confessed to taking up arms against the state, but Amnesty said family members who saw him in court believe he also was tortured into confessing because of apparent torture marks on his body.

Ramin Hossein Panahi began a hunger strike at Rajaei Shahr prison on August 26 by sewing his lips together in protest at his death sentence.

Mohammad Salas

On June 18, Iranian authorities executed Mohammad Salas convicted of killing three police officers during clashes involving members of a Sufi order, despite calls to stop his execution.

According to Amnesty International, the 51-year-old bus driver was convicted and sentenced to death in March following a “grossly unfair trial.”

Salas said he was forced under torture to make a “confession” against himself. This “confession”, taken from his hospital bed, was broadcast on state television weeks before his trial and used as the only piece of evidence to convict him. He was not allowed access to his chosen lawyer at any point before or during his trial, and his independent lawyer’s repeated demands to the authorities to allow critical evidence indicating his innocence were dismissed outright.

Death-row prisoners, horrifying numbers

Rjaie Shahr Prison

The highest number of executions count up for Rajaishahr Prison. This prison is also known as Gohardasht. It’s located in the city of Karaj approximately 20 km west of Tehran.

Around 264 inmates are held in ward 10 of this prison, of which 86 are on death row, meaning one third.

In ward 3, known as the youth ward, with around 180 inmates under the age of 25, around 80 are currently on death row condemned for “retribution in kind.” A number of these individuals were arrested under the age of 18. This accumulates to nearly half of the youth ward and one-third of ward 10 are inmates on death row.

In ward 3 nearly 120 of the 210 inmates are on death row. This is more than half.

In ward 2, known as the Dar Al Quran ward, 120 of the 160 inmates are condemned based on “retribution” charges.

Qezel Hessar Prison

Unit 2 of this prison has around 1,000 death row inmates, with numerous individuals charged with murder and others for drug offenses.

Urmia Central Prison

Inwards 1 to 4 of this jail more than 166 individuals are currently on death row. All the while this may not be the latest numbers.

Wards 1 and 2 of this prison, specified for mentally disturbed inmates, eight individuals are on death row. Ward 12 is also home to three death row inmates.

The so-called youth ward houses six individuals condemned to execution.

Ward 15, known as the drug offenses ward, six individuals are known to be on death row.

Zahedan Central Prison

According to the latest list of names rounded up in March, 145 inmates are on death row. Some of which have been held in the horrendous conditions of this jail for years awaiting their execution. Drug criminals and a number of political prisoners are seen among the death row inmates.

24 individuals in ward 4 of this prison are on death row, mostly for drug-related charges, murders or affiliation to political groups.

Wards 1 and 3 of this prison houses another 21 death row inmates.

Dastgerd Prison of Isfahan

This prison has around 20 death row inmates, charged with murder and drug offenses.

Death-row prisoners’ conditions

The 17th World Day Against the Death Penalty aims at raising awareness on the inhumane living conditions of people sentenced to death.

Death row prisoners in Iran linger in catastrophic conditions from solitary confinement to the medieval tortures inflicted on them. The living conditions tend to dehumanize death-row prisoners and take away their dignity.

In many cases where people were sentenced to death or executed, the proceedings did not meet international standards of the due process of law. This includes the extraction of “confessions” through torture or other ill-treatment.

The tortures some death row prisoners were reportedly subjected to follow:

Completely stripping the prisoners and pouring boiling hot water on them;

Pushing needles into their genitals;

Hanging prisoners upside down from their feet;

Hanging prisoners by their wrists;

Pulling out the prisoners’ nails;

Leaving the prisoners in absolute darkness for about forty days. Some prisoners lose part of their eyesight;

Depriving prisoners of bathing for two months;

Restricting prisoners’ use of restroom to only once in every 24 hours;

Giving prisoners food rations the size of the palm of a hand;

Forcing prisoners to eat in the same unwashed plate for three months;

Flogging prisoners while eating their food.

Many spend prolonged periods on death row, sometimes for more than a decade. On numerous occasions, prisoners are sent to the gallows, then returned to the cell. Sometimes, they inform prisoners of scheduled hanging but postpone its implementation. In this way, death-row prisoners have to endure additional pain and suffering.

Sometimes, the families are not informed of the execution of their loved ones adequately in advance and not given the chance to say goodbye.

A commonplace in many Iranian prisons is to force the families of execution victims to pay for the noose used to hang their loved ones, or the bullet used to shoot them. The victim’s body is not delivered to the family until the money is paid.

2018 reports included cases of authorities refusing to deliver the body of execution victims to their families or burying them without the families’ permission.

I urge the world’s governments to stop their political and economic relations with the Iranian regime unless the regime ends torture and executions of prisoners and abandons its involvement in terrorism.#NoToExecution#Iranpic.twitter.com/gkU72qBjyp

NCRI– The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran addressed the Seventy-second session of the General Assembly in New York on October 25, to discuss the dismal situation of human rights in Iran that has been prevalent since the Regime took over in 1979.

Asma Jahangir, who was addressing the General Assembly for the first time since taking the role in November 2016, delivered a report on the first six months of 2017 which was based on sources both inside and outside of Iran.

Executions

Jahangir explained that she was worried about the rate of executions in Iran, as well she should be. Currently, Iran has the highest execution rate per capita and is one of the few countries to still execute juvenile offenders, in clear violation of the UN’s Rights of the Child charter.

She said: “I am concerned by the rate of executions in Iran. Reports indicate that since the beginning of the year 435 persons have been executed…At least four juvenile offenders were executed, and 86 more are known to be on death row, although the actual figure may be higher. I take the opportunity to reiterate my request for a list of all juvenile offenders on death row and reiterate my appeal to the Iranian authorities to urgently abolish the sentencing of children to death, and to engage in a comprehensive process of commutation of all death sentences issued against children, in line with juvenile justice standards.”

Jahangir also expressed concern about the death sentence levied against spiritual leader Mohammad Ali Taheri for so-called corruption on earth- an exceptionally vague charge which the mullahs use when you haven’t actually committed a crime but they want to punish you anyway.

Taheri’s trial is believed to have violated several international standards including due process and coercion of witnesses. As such, Jahangir called for his conviction to be overturned.

She said: “I call for the immediate withdrawal of charges against Mr. Taheri and for his unconditional release, and the withdrawal of charges against all individuals held for peaceful exercise of freedom of expression, religion, or belief.”

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

Jahangir also raised the worrying issue of torture, corporal punishment, and the denial of medical care to coerce confessions and punish people, which violates human rights law and international standards of justice.

She said: “I regretfully note that amputation, blinding, flogging, and the continued use of prolonged solitary confinement continues to be regularly practised. I am also deeply concerned by consistent reports of the denial of access to proper and necessary medical treatment of detainees, including the deprival of medical care as a form of punishment.”

Many political prisoners have gone on hunger strikes to protest the dismal conditions they are being kept in and the Regime refuses to allow them access to sorely needed medical care.

Prisoners of conscience

While on the topic of political prisoners, it is important to discuss the routine detention of human rights defenders, journalists, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, and political campaigners for freedom of expression and peaceful activism.

As of June 2017, no less than 26 journalists/bloggers had been arrested and/or sentenced for exercising press freedom. Many more had been harassed and/or intimidated by the Regime through interrogation, surveillance, amongst other things.

Jahangir even spoke to those working at the BBC Persian Service who had been harassed by the Regime and told that if they continued working their relatives would be targeted and their assets would be frozen.

She said: “They all sought private meetings for fear of the consequence of being identified as having provided information to my mandate.”

Another worrying trend is that of the imprisonment of dual nationals, like UK charity worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who have been accused of spying for Western countries and sentenced to many years in jail.

The 1988 Massacre

This persecution of ordinary Iranians based on their political beliefs is not a recent phenomenon but is well ingrained in the Iranian Regime’s DNA.

In 1988, the Regime slaughtered over 30,000 political prisoners in just a couple of months. They buried their bodies in mass graves, refused to tell the families what had happened, and attempted to hide their “crime against humanity” from the rest of the world.

Despite recent acknowledgements of the genocide from the highest-ranking members of the Regime, the international community has still been largely silent and this silence must end.

Jahangir said: “The families of the victims have a right to remedy, reparation, and the right to know about the truth of these events and the fate of the victims without risking reprisal. I therefore reiterate my call upon the Government to ensure that a thorough and independent investigation into these events is carried out.”

Rights of Women

As you can imagine, women in Iran are routinely oppressed by the Iranian Regime, whether its mandatory dress codes, banning women from attending sports matches, arresting people from reading and sharing feminist literature, excluding women from certain occupations, or many more misogynistic things.

Jahangir said: “I call upon the Government to address these concerns in practice, and in legislation through ratifying the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and to repeal all laws and policies that discriminate against women and girls.”

Jahangir paid tribute to the many human rights defenders who have risked their lives to speak to her about the situation in Iran.

She said: “I have received ongoing and consistent reports of harassment, intimidation, and prosecutions of human rights defenders. For example, the well respected human rights defender, Narges Mohammadi, continues to be imprisoned simply because of her commitment to human rights. I am also deeply concerned by the reports of attacks on women human rights defenders in the form of judicial harassment, detention, and smear campaigns.”

Even those living outside Iran fear reprisals from the Regime’s many terrorist proxy groups or that their family will be targeted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

What’s next for Iran?

Jahangir expressed hope that the situation would improve through diplomatic action, but this does not seem likely.

Iran regime’s President Hassan Rouhani made various promises during his campaign, which echoed promises that he made and did not follow through on after taking office in 2013. This so-called moderate has seen over 3,000 people executed during his four-year term and continues to see the Iranian people suppressed at the hands of the Regime.

The only way to achieve human rights in Iran is through regime change by and for the people of Iran.

Reyhaneh Jabbari walked to the gallows at dawn on Saturday, October 25, 2014, after seven years of incarceration.

Since then, Reyhaneh stands as the symbol of Iran’s defenseless women who are handed the death penalty without deserving it. At the same time, she has become an icon for brave women who do not succumb to the Iranian regime and its demands.

She was 26 at the time of execution. An interior designer by profession, she had defended herself against rape by a high official of the Intelligence Ministry (MOIS), Morteza Sarbandi.

Reyhaneh was viciously tortured to make false “confessions” which would whitewash the methods and image of the Ministry of Intelligence but she did not give in. Instead, she wrote about the incident and about many women in the clerical regime’s jails whose only crime was being poor.

She cried for and wrote about the victims of the clerical regime’s misogynous laws and for the young women who did not have any support in society and were victims of oppression and violence.

Let us remember on this day, this young courageous woman, Reyhaneh Jabbari, who resisted for seven years at the cost of her life to uphold her dignity and humanitarian values.

She remains an idol for young Iranian women and men who oppose the regime’s injustices and yearn freedom. In her name, and in the name of all the innocent victims of the clerical regime, the people of Iran call for justice.

By Jazeh Miller

While hundreds of international figures and lawyers have called for a trial of the regime’s leaders and the perpetrators of the massacre of members and sympathizers of PMOI/MEK in 1988, the Iran regime is trying to destroy the graves of MEK martyrs killed in this crime.

According to the reports from various parts of Iran, the regime has been eliminating the signs of this MEK genocide in several cities including Ahvaz (southwestern Iran), Mashhad (northeast), Isfahan (center of Iran), Tabriz and Ardabil (northwestern), etc. They seek to destroy the mass graves of MEK members so that the families could not pay tribute to their loved ones the way they have been doing for years in various ways such as cementing the graves or removing the garbage and so on.

The Iranian regime also destroyed the mass graves of MEK martyrs in Vadi-e Rahmat Cemetery of Tabriz under the pretext of carrying out construction projects. Moreover, the supporters of the MEK distributed the pictures and videos of grave destruction on the internet on June 23 2018. The news of such crime has been also posted in forms of pictures on Vadi-e Rahmat Cemetery Telegram Channel on September 11, 2017.

As the Iran regime admitted, the construction project includes a total area of 4500 square meters. The procedures consist of excavating operations, rolling, leveling and fitting, pouring concrete, building walls, gridding, installing light pylons. Three companies and the Supervision of Tabriz Civil Engineering Department launched this project and the Cemetery Organization of Tabriz Municipality is the employer.

As the satellite TV of the Iranian resistance, ‘Simay Azadi’ Channel released photos and videos on the destruction of graves, the Iranian regime also destroyed a MEK mass grave in Sowme’eh Sara, Gilan Province. One of the supporters of the MEK who visited this location, reports:

“I went to the cemetery in which the MEK martyrs of the massacre of 1988 are buried. I took photos of the graves of townspeople but I could not find the graves of MEK martyrs. Nevertheless, I saw a mechanical excavator behind the cemetery amidst the tall trees where the MEK martyrs are buried. As the people said, this excavator is operating to make roads.”

He added,” The cemetery of MEK martyrs is exactly located behind these tall trees, as the supporters of the MEK released pictures of this area. They are currently destroying the cemetery.” While a Justice Seeking movement is formed to try the perpetrators of the 1988 massacre of MEK and non MEK affiliates, the Iranian regime intends to eliminate the signs of such brutal crime.

The Justice Seeking movement calls for the disclosure of secrets about the 1988 massacre, therefore, the perpetrators have to answer the following questions:

1. The full name of MEK and non MEK affiliates who were executed.

2. How many MEK and non MEK affiliates were killed in each city and province?

3. The mothers of those executed shall know where their loved ones are buried and where the address of mass graves is.

4. At the end, if these criminals are proud of such crime against the humanity, then why do not they reveal the names of the members of death committees in different provinces?

It is noteworthy that in June this year a Call for urgent action to prevent destruction of 1988 massacre (mainly MEK members and sympathizers) evidence was made by Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran in which it stated:

During the past few days the mullahs’ regime in the city of Tabriz, northwest Iran, has begun a campaign of vandalizing graves of members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) executed back in the 1980s, especially those massacred during the summer of 1988. These now destroyed graves were in the Rahmat Valley Cemetery. To this point the graves of 75 MEK martyrs, including Akbar Choopani and Soraya Abolfat’hi, who was executed while pregnant, have been vandalized.

Iranian intelligence has supervised measures placing 10 centimeters of cement and leveling the grounds in the cemetery to destroy all evidence of such a martyrs’ cemetery. They have also placed a sign reading, “Leveling the children’s block” and installed a number of gravestones in the area where the cement has been poured, to prevent any sign of the gravesite destruction. Attached images provide signs of the machinery used, the vandalized gravestone, and various phases of cement pouring and the placing of new gravestones.

Last month in Mashhad, northeast Iran, mass graves of PMOI/MEK martyrs in the Beheshte Reza cemetery were also vandalized.

In the city of Ahvaz, southwest Iran, city authorities have been widening a road near a cemetery in order to vandalize martyrs’ graves. Signs of tumbled bodies in a mass grave previously covered with cement were seen as the digging began in the area of phase 2 of Padadshahr and the Bankdar Boulevard in this city. Authorities quickly covered the mass grave with dirt and continued to widen the road.

The Iranian Resistance calls on all international human rights organizations, especially the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Situation in Iran to condemn this inhumane act and take urgent action to prevent the destruction of such evidence of previous mass executions and massacre of political prisoners mainly MEK members, especially those of 1988. Iran’s ruling dictators must face justice for their crimes against humanity and 120,000 political executions.

On the anniversary of the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in Iran

The 1988 massacre of over 30,000 political prisoners in Iran

has been described as the worst crime against humanity since World War II. [1]

28 years after this genocide, the Iranian regime still refuses to acknowledge the executions, or provide any information as to how many prisoners were killed.

Based on eyewitness accounts of survivors, the massacre had been prepared for from at least a year before. The order for the massacre came from Khomeini directly in the form of a religious decree (fatwa), calling for the execution of all who remained steadfast in their support for the opposition People’s Mojahedin of Iran.[2]

A so-called Amnesty Commission (better known among prisoners as the Death Commission) asked a simple question from every prisoner: do you still support the PMOI/MEK? Those who answered yes were executed, even if they had already finished serving their original sentence.[3] None of the victims had any new activities while in detention and many of them were 15 or 16 years of age at the time of original arrest and prosecution.

The executions started in the last week of July, peaking on July 28 until August 14, and continuing onto autumn and even the following year in some places.

Naturally, the vast majority of the victims were members and supporters of the PMOI/MEK, but the order extended to other groups in later stages.

Prisoners were hanged in groups, sometimes 10 to 15 at a time, and later transported out of prison by dump trucks, and buried in unmarked mass graves. There was no mercy on anyone, even young girls and pregnant women.

Khomeini’s haste to execute was so abhorrent many of his closest confidantes had doubts about it. Hossein Ali Montazeri, Khomeini’s heir apparent and the country’s second highest authority at the time, urged for leniency and a slowdown.[4]

In a book of memoirs published in December 2000, Montazeri pointed out the vicious tortures practiced especially against young girls and women before execution during the 1988 massacre.

In a famous letter to Khomeini which led to his ouster, Montazeri wrote, “If you probably insist on your decision, at least order (the three-man Death Commission) to base their rulings on unanimous vote not that of the majority. And women should also be made exceptions, especially women who have children. And finally, the execution of several thousand people in several days will backfire.”

From this letter we can understand the role and impact of women in the prisons of those days. They were firm and resilient and inspired resistance despite knowing the fact that they would have to go through the horrifying experience rape before being hanged. But they said NO to the executioners.

It has been reported that 80 percent of PMOI women detained in the Women’s Ward 3 of Evin Prison had been massacred by September 1988. They included Monireh Rajavi, who had two small daughters and was executed only because she was the sister of the Iranian Resistance’s Leader Massoud Rajavi. There was also Ashraf Ahmadi, a political prisoner from the Shah’s time, with four children. The victims also included a wide range of people from various professions, including PMOI’s female candidates for parliamentary elections Fatemeh Zare’ii from Shiraz, and Zohreh Ainol-Yagheen from Isfahan. Dr. Hamideh Sayyahi and Dr. Shourangiz Karimian, along with her sister, and National Volleyball Team player Forouzan Abdi were among those executed in the 1988 massacre.

An audio clip just recently released by Montazeri’s family on his website, also reveals dreadful details about the massacre of women. The tape recording from Mr. Montazeri’s meeting with members of the Death Commission, includes an example about the execution of a 15-year-old girl who had been taken to prison only two days before to break her resistant brother but since she did not denounce her executed brother, she was executed, as well.

The tape also includes reference to the execution of a pregnant woman in Isfahan.

The overall picture of the 1988 massacre is totally inadequate because the massacre was extensive, carried out in prisons all across the country. In some instances, there was not any survivor. The clerical regime dealt with every information regarding the massacre as top secret, not allowing any leaks.

So, what is known about the massacre has been extracted and pieced together from the limited number of reports by survivors and families who were called to collect the bodies of their loved ones,[5] as well as from scattered acknowledgments made by the regime’s former officials as noted in this article.

The other side of this crime against humanity is of course, the steadfastness of a generation of prisoners who did not buckle under the threat of death and defended their identity which was akin to their nation’s freedom. They thus sealed their nation’s right to freedom of choice and thought, and turned this great crime against humanity into an epical humane epitome of human grace and grit which makes every conscientious human being humble before its magnificence.

The Iranian Resistance has renewed its call for the international prosecution of all perpetrators of the 1988 massacre and crime against humanity in Iran, who are still in power and hold important positions of authority. They include Khamenei (then President under Khomeini), Rafsanjani (then acting Commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces), Rouhani (then assistant to the acting Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces), and members of the death commission, Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (Minister of Justice under Hassan Rouhani), Hossein-Ali Nayyeri (head of the Supreme Disciplinary Court for Judges under Rouhani), Morteza Eshraqi (then Prosecutor), and Ebrahim Raeesi (one of the top clerics, member of the Assembly of Experts, and Khamenei’s appointed head of Astan Qods-e Razavi foundation, which is an important political and economic powerhouses funding the regime’s war efforts).

[1] A former Intelligence Ministry deputy recorded a video clip in 2008, in which he revealed that the clerical regime had massacred some 33,700 political prisoners and buried them in mass graves. According to Reza Malek, there are between 170 to 190 mass graves across the country.

[2] “Whoever at any stage continues to belong to the (PMOI/MEK) must be executed,” Khomeini’s fatwa read.

[3] Khomeini assigned a three-member so-called “Amnesty Commission”, who held summary trials and actually interrogated prisoners to determine their fate.

The questions were focused on whether the inmate continued to have any allegiances to the PMOI/MEK. If the prisoners were not willing to fully collaborate with the regime against the PMOI/MEK, it was viewed as a sign of sympathy to the organization and the sentence was immediate execution.

[4] Montazeri was ousted and placed under house arrest until his death in 2009, for his protests against the massacre.

[5] A report from Shiraz indicated: “When we the rumors of the massacres spread among the public, we referred to the prison. Executioners told us, ‘What did you expect, that we serve you sweets and candies? We killed 860 people at once in one day! Now, if you hold a funeral, we will raze down your house as well.’ “

Reyhaneh Jabbari was executed in order to defend herself against rape in October 2014

According to the data collected from material published by the Iranian state-run press, human rights activists and their websites, or from private sources in touch with the Iranian Resistance, 80 of those executed during Rouhani’s tenure have been women.

Nevertheless, the actual figures are definitely higher, as most executions in Iran are carried out secretly without anyone knowing except those who carry it out.

In the past few days, 28 executions have been carried out in Iranian prisons all over the country. According to Iran Human Rights organization, four prisoners were hanged on 8 July in Orumieh prison including Khalil Musavi Kousi, Kheiroddin Mashmoul, Mirhaj Abdi and Sofi Kolonakzadeh who were all convicted of drug related crimes.

Furthermore, two prisoners each were hanged in Maragheh prison, Rajai Shahr prison, Gorgan Prison and Semnan Central prison in the past one week.

All the prisoners have been identified who were convicted and executed on various charges including murder, rape, and drug related crimes. It was reported on July 10 that at least 11 prisoners were transferred to solitary cells for execution in Rajai Shahr prison and the death sentence for 7 of them was carried out in the courtyard on the next morning. The prisoners were identified as Mehrdad Sabie Afshar, Mohammad Shirzad, Hamid Islami, Mehdi…

He sought to uproot the resistance movement in a bid to preserve his own rule. He wanted to do something that no one would ever again think of change and of freedom. He found his answer in the hasty annihilation of the PMOI and all those who persisted on the ideal of freedom.

In the face of such unprecedented brutality, the PMOI prisoners took pride in going to the gallows in the thousands. They registered themselves in the historical conscience of their nation as symbols of dedication and loyalty to the cause of freedom. And the history of Iran was blessed with the light and hope of their unwavering resistance.

Throughout the years, their blood has continued to run in the veins of society, provoking the spirit of rebellion and protest in the struggle against the tyrannical clerical regime.

Our endless salutes to all the prisoners massacred in 1988 who persisted on their positions against the Velayat-e Faqih under interrogation and stood up for freedom. Their struggle and resistance has been battering the regime since then until now.
Khomeini concealed their names, but they are the most famous men and women of Iran’s modern history. The regime hid their graves, but they have remained the most spirited and obvious members of the nation fighting in the field. Long years pass since they kissed the gallows, but they continue to sing the crimson anthem of freedom.

My fellow compatriots and courageous youths,
Last year, on July 28, 2016, the families of martyrs and political prisoners issued a statement announcing a campaign commemorating the victims of the 1988 massacre. The movement demanding justice for the victims of the massacre is now one-year-old. During this period, the campaign energized by the victims’ sacrifice and our nation’s will to achieve freedom has time and again shaken up the clerical regime that relies on massacre.
It has brought about broad-based knowledge in Iranian society particularly among the youth about the dreadful crimes committed by the Velayat-e Faqih regime. It shattered the mullahs’ conspiracy of silence to cover up the 1988 massacre and compelled the ruling clerics to confess to their involvement in this crime against humanity.

The justice seeking movement dealt a heavy setback to Khamenei who had nominated a death-commission member for presidency. It defeated the regime in its totality in the elections sham, as the nation embraced the movement’s slogan of “no to the executioner, no to the charlatan.” The campaign also resuscitated this case internationally while it had been silenced by the western governments’ policy of appeasement.
These efforts led to the point where the UN Secretary General noted the 1988 massacre in his annual report this year.

This year-long campaign proved that the Velayat-e Faqih regime is extremely vulnerable with regards to the slaughter on which the pillars of its rule rest. As a result, every effort by the mullahs to incriminate the PMOI immerses them even further in a quagmire of disgrace.

Since the outset, when the news of this massacre began to leak out of prisons, the Iranian Resistance has endeavored to expose this crime on the international level. In a letter to the UN Secretary General at the time, Massoud Rajavi, the leader of the Iranian Resistance, wrote, “The international community must compel the regime to answer questions about the identities of all those executed, the date, place and manner of executions and their place of burial. It must introduce those in charge and those who carried out this major crime.”

In the past year, too, supporters of the Iranian Resistance risked their own lives to collect the previously unannounced names of victims of the massacre and addresses of their graves, as well as information about members of the death commissions in the provinces.

I thank all of them and everyone who joined the justice seeking movement over the past year. I thank all the youths and students who voiced their demand for justice for victims of the 1988 massacre at any opportunity, and the prisoners who supported the movement under the most difficult circumstances.

Nevertheless, everything done so far has been only the first step. The Iranian people and Resistance will not relent until those in charge of the massacre of political prisoners, namely those who hold the highest positions of authority in this regime, face justice.
In the start of the second year of the movement calling for justice, I urge everyone to help further expand the movement. This is part and parcel with the Iranian people’s quest for freedom and the overthrow of the regime in its entirety. Accordingly,
1. I call on all the courageous youths of this land to stage protests to compel the regime’s leaders to publish a complete list of names of those massacred, addresses of their graves, and names of those in charge of the slaughter.

2. I call on the families of martyrs and political prisoners to gather at the gravesites of their martyrs and in this way force the clerical regime to recognize their trampled right to hold memorial ceremonies for their heroic children.

3. I call on my fellow compatriots to actively participate in the national campaign to collect the information of the martyrs, find their tombs and expose the mullahs and murderers involved in this crime.

4. I call on young seminary students and the clergy who have distanced themselves from the ominous regime of the velayat-e faqih to openly condemn the massacre and distance themselves from Khomeini and the inhuman and anti-Islamic velayat-e faqih regime.

5. I call on parliaments, political parties, human rights organizations, religious leaders, political and social personalities in various countries to strongly condemn the massacre of political prisoners in Iran in an act of solidarity with the Iranian people. They should urge their governments to make their continued political and commercial relations with the mullahs’ religious dictatorship contingent on end to executions and torture in Iran.

6. I urge the UN High Commissioner on human rights to immediately set up an independent committee to investigate the 1988 massacre and subsequently put those in charge before justice. I urge the UN Security Council to make the arrangements for prosecution of the regime’s leaders for committing crime against humanity.

All the major cases of carnage and repression in the past quarter of a century in Iran are linked to the person of Khamenei and his corrupt offices. He earned succession to Khomeini by actively participating in the 1988 massacre, and must be prosecuted for crimes against humanity before all the other leaders of the regime.

Dear compatriots, the main target of the massacre in 1988 was the PMOI. Khomeini taught his successors that to preserve power, they must annihilate the group that persists on its positions. In the past three decades, Khamenei and his accomplice, have put this lesson into practice.

In contrast, the PMOI and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as the democratic alternative to the regime, are the force of victory and freedom. They will realize their glorious goal by relying on the people of Iran. On that day, the victims of the 1988 massacre and all the 120,000 martyrs fallen for Iran’s freedom will live in the determination of Iran’s youths, in 1000 bastions of rebellion, 1000 Ashrafs, and in the army of freedom. They will thus start a blessed era of freedom, democracy and equality.
Endless salutes to the shining stars of the Iranian Resistance, the proud martyrs of 1988.
And hail to the pioneers who have risen to call for justice for the victims and continue their path and cause on a higher level for Iran’s freedom.